models.html
"The assumption is that the bulk of the computing will not be done in
public clusters, but somewhere out on the net": Well, here comes the
broken record. Pervasive student ownership coupled with dormitory and
ILG networks certainly will move the bulk of *some* computing off
central facilities. For the most part this will be the kind of networked
computing that the Web and other network services support -- access to
information (scholarly, social, recreational, logistical, whatever),
structured and unstructured communication, and so forth. It also will be
the computing we usually think of as "producitivity" computing, which
starts with things like word processing and spreadsheet-type calculation
and, at MIT, moves rapidly to symbolic-math tools, basic statistical
packages, basic drawing and graphing programs, and so forth.
But I believe that there always has been and always will be a next layer
of computing that requires more power and perhaps more specialization
than it is reasonable to expect of student-owned machines. Currently
this level focuses on computationally and graphically intensive
applications such as the design and rendering work Bill Mitchell's
students do, the molecular simulation and manipulation that Bruce
Tidor's students do, the sail and hull design that Jerry Milgram's
students have done, and so forth. I believe that we will continue to
need central facilities for educational applications such as these --
even though in time the ones I listed will become commonplace, and the
advanced applications will be ones we haven't yet imagined. What the
scope of central facilities should be, whether they should be shared
across departments, who should pay for and support them, and similar
questions remain to be answered (for example, Hal and I disagree about
the relative role of central and departmental administration), but to
suggest that having students own computers will obviate the need for
public clusters does not, in my view, wash.
short.html
"...and, thereafter, another $150K per year to support the upgrades
required to keep the network up to date": I'd substitute this text: "and
perhaps $150k to $300k annually thereafter in network fees per year for
services, support, maintenance, and improvement." We also might want to
allude in this passage to the fact that students already have such an
arrangement, with long-term funding from the Provost's budgets, and that
financial-systems reengineering may require such an arrangement for
numerous administrative staff.
"Some amount of the various funds...": I'd add some words so that the
middle would read "...for curriculum development from Departments,
Schools, the Dean for Undergraduate Education, and the Provost should be
earmarked..."
medium.html
I agree with Hal that many of these recommendations are really short
rather than medium, depending what we mean by those terms.
long.html
I agree with Hal again (this is getting worrisome!) that "wetware
upgrades" HAS TO GO! One overcute phrase like this will doom the entire
report, since it's all people will remember (sort of like Newt
Gingrich's proposal that the poor need laptops -- can you remember
anything else he's said about technology? he's actually said other
things, some of them even sensible).
I have much the same problem with equating "the brightest high school
juniors and seniors" with "nerds in training". I think we want the
former, and not the latter -- I equate "nerd" with words like "narrow"
and "asocial"...
Generally:
I still think that the report pretends that education via advanced
technologies evolves along only one dimension, that of bandwidth and
related processing. As I said last friday, there's another dimension
involving computational power along which there also has been and will
be progress. If we're to be taken seriously we need to demonstrate that
we understand the two-dimensionality of progress in education via
advanced technology, and then say explicitly that we're going to ignore
the computational dimension in our discussion and recommendations. When
we fail to do this we make mistakes -- for example, I believe that the
public-facilities misreading stems from viewing them from a bandwidth
perspective, whereas the continuing need for them stems from a
computational perspective.
Of course there's also a third dimension to all this, that of support,
and we've managed almost never to mention that. The more people do
things with network and computing technology, the more they need
documentation, training, guidance, and help. Support is expensive and
difficult to provide, and if it's not provided well then a Byzantine,
extremely conservative, and on average low-quality system of local help
evolves. One need only look up the river to see this, and this leads me
to suggest that we devote some explicit words to the problem somewhere.
No matter how many wires, machines, protocols, and applications we
deploy, lasting and productive change will elude us without commensurate
attention (and resources!) to support.